The gold leaf. [volume] (Henderson, N.C.) 1881-1911, 1887-02-03

Stalking Broadcast Through
the Land.
Need Of More Stringent Laws and the
Strict Enforcement Of the same.
fWilSOn Mirror. I

Crime stalks over the country like
pes.ilence. The very food gates of
perdition seems to have been lifted,
and the roar OF its maddened and flri-
Gus waters can be heard rolling along,
bearing away reputation, bearing away
character, bearing away honor, bear
ing away life-yes, bearing away in its
downward and destructive sweep all
that makes life dear and precious.
Every paper teens with the sick
ening details of horrid and revolving
crime. Murder has grown so familiar
that people do not tremble with horror
and wild disrnay when they hear that
a fellow being has been shot down like
worthless cur, and ushered without
moments warning into the Presence
Chamber of the great | Am.
Honesty-the rare virtue which
made "man the noblest work of God"
is urged to take back seat, at the Sug-
gestlon of many, while trickery, shrewd
ness, cunning and fraud, are cordially
invited to take its vacated office in the
high and holy and God-like sanctuary
of right dealing among each other.
Woman's virtue-the richest and
dearest and most precious gem that
ever sparkled in the God-wrought cor
onal of her worth and excellence is
treated by many as lightly as the gilt
tering icicles which Winters freezing
fingers hang upon the sun-kissed brow
of glorious morning, and which sparkle
for moment with a luStre as rich as
the trembling brilliances Of immortal
fires, then fall and break and die away
forever. Every breeze is burder.ed with
the wall of the wronged, the outraged,
the ruined and the lost.
Have we over-colored the picture 7
Is the background dark and sombre ?
Is it1 Just take up the papers and read
them through and you will see that
never, since the first born OF mortal
race became a fratricide under the
seraph-guarded walls of Paradise, has
stricken and groaning cath beheld such
a carnival of wickedness, such wild
siturnalia ofshame and dishonor. From
Maine to Mexico pillows of Pande-
monium's lava dash their ebon spray
against the mountain crags of sin, and
ali feel their baneful and life-destroy-
ing influences.
Crimes for which our fathers had no
names, for they were scarcely known,
now haunt themselves in print, and
society, "now choked with customs
and foul Deeds" read them over and
over without a shock, yes, without a
tremor. Murders which have startled
Europe, are treated as merest tribes,
and in many cases no effort whatever
is made to arrest the guilty party
whose hands have been Redeemed by
the life blood of his victim.
A halt must be made, a stop put to
the reckless march of crime. Those
entrusted with the administration o.
Justice should give "an eye for an eye
a tooth for tooth and life for life. .
They should remember Babylon and
Nineva. Once proud and rich and
powerful, but now their glory has de
parted, their palaces are now the vile
habitations of the bats and the moles
and the gaunt wolf howls where once
their holiest alters stood.
We must enforce the law, punish al
offenders, be they high or low, rich o.
poor, or we will have to read the con
tinuation of our history in the mourn
full story ofother nations saturated witt
crime, and whose terrible enormltie
brought down upon Them the fearful
indignation of long forbearing, lonl
suffering but infinitely just and power
full God who cannot and who will no
, look upon crime with the least degre
. of federation, or with the faintes
shadow of allowance.
We Have Heard of Similar Case